Bloodlines

My saint of a mother had long suspected that something was amiss with respect to my gambling hobby. She was married to a problem gambler, and consequently she had a front row seat for the misery that ensued there. Most of that took place before I was four or five years old, from what I understand. I’d give anything to be a fly on the wall -- a conscious, cognizant fly on the wall, that is-- to watch my father in his gambling heyday. He attempted to shield his kids from what he was up to. And he was not delinquent in his fatherly duties: playing catch and going to ballgames and dressing up like Santa Claus. The thing that stuck out about those days was that they’d be briefly, but consistently, punctuated by phone calls he had to make. For instance:

“Wanna have a snowball fight?”
“Yeah! Yay!”
“O.K. -- put on your boots and get bundled up. I’ve got to make a call first.”

“I’ve got to make a call.” It became a joke in the house. I vaguely recall that these calls had to do with the names of exciting, far-off cities like Baltimore and San Diego and the recitation of numbers. Suffice to say he wasn’t discussing the national weather forecast or planning a vacation.

So when my mother discovered my bank statements, replete with overdraft notices and a score of sketchy entries for hundreds of dollars apiece by vendors with names like “GLOBALSPORTSLTD” or whatever, she went crazy. She told me in between sobs that I was going to ruin my life. I agreed. I wouldn’t gamble anymore, we agreed. I meant it. Three months later, I set a personal record: I played poker in a casino eight days in a row. During final exams, no less. I think a lot of the relevant literature would suggest that I was seeking attention. Trying to get caught. But I disagree. Mostly I was just trying to get even.

The Nuts and Bolts of How I Ruined My Life, Part Two.

Second, in a continuing series:

The 1997 film Rounders culminates with Mike McDermott, the movie's protagonist, dropping out of law school to go to Las Vegas in order to pursue his destiny as a professional card player. The screenwriters of that movie probably couldn't have anticipated the explosion of internet poker that was right around the corner. But because of the ubiquity of online gaming and the massive amount of dead money floating around in the internet ether, the ceremonial journey to Vegas to make one's name in the poker world seems kind of quaint less than ten years later. Surely the new breed of Mike McDermotts are "making their runs at it" from the comfort of their dorm rooms.

What's this got to do with me? Thanks to online poker, I didn't have to make a conscious, visible choice to dedicate my life to gambling instead of law school. I could instead juggle the two endeavors. And by 'juggle', I mean remain nominally enrolled in law school while spending 10-15 hours daily playing poker online. I could lose my cake and eat it too!

Needless to say, this adversely affected my grade point average. I went from being a B+ student (pre-Party Poker) to a B student after. Yeah, law school is that easy. So why didn't I finish? Embarassingly, I blew my tuition money the second semester of my second year of school. Or more accurately, I blew my living expenses budget. They let students borrow about $8,000 per semester to cover non-tuition living expenses. They give it to you in one lump sum.

Follow the $8,000 closely, folks:

Taxpayers pay their taxes to the Federal Treasury. The Federal Treasury apportions money to the federal Stafford Loan program. Stafford then allocates funds to different universities for them to distribute. My university gives me my allocation in one lump sum. Then I give it to Party Poker. Party Poker gives most of it to other, more skilled poker players, and keeps a percentage for itself for its trouble. And of course, those talented people lucky enough to be Americans who withdrew their winnings from the site then report the income on their tax returns, and the circle of life begins anew.

Next installment: I repeat the above cycle (twice!), thereby exhausting all alternative sources of credit and making it impossible to remain enrolled in school.

The Nuts and Bolts of How I Ruined My Life, Part One.

First, in a continuing series:

In the way of prefatory remarks, I feel obliged to address some of the concerns / comments sent in by readers via email. (By the way, I urge you to use the comments section rather than flooding my personal email box...) First, I've been accused of being too glib about everything -- my financial troubles, my addiction, "ruining my life" you name it. To a certain extent, it's a fair observation. But how else can someone talk about personal cataclysm? What are my options? To be hysterical? I made my bed and now I'm sleeping in it.

Anyway, yes, I'm a relatively young man. And I can say in a very real way that my life has been ruined by gambling. Not temporarily sidetracked. Not detoured. Ruined. That's not to say that I want to kill myself, or that I can never be happy. It just means that I had life X lined up for me, and now the possibility of that is dead, never to return.

What, precisely, is Life X? It is, I'd imagine, a life in which you are not an addict. One in which you don't have all seven of your credit card numbers, expiration dates, and security codes committed to memory. Suburban house, picket fence. It is about being responsible. Most of all, it is about being able to enjoy things that don't involve risk and uncertainty. Swimming. Reading. Sex. Just sitting around. Hell for me is a week-long stint at the beach with nothing to do but "relax." I cannot enjoy things. That's the real sickness, and it's why people like me inevitably relapse.

Next Installment: Why I don't have a law degree.

Declare your independence...

... or bemoan your addiction. Either way, the merchandise I'm selling via CafePress is kind of fun. Perfect for that degenerate gambler on your Christmas list:

Purchase I Hate Poker merchandise.

(If you're detecting a bit of bemused detachment and tongue-in-cheekness with all of this, you're right. Even people who have essentially torpedoed their lives can be whimsical. Gallows humor, I believe it's called.)

The Houdini Complex and Divine Intervention.

It is difficult to convince myself that I am not exceptional. That the rules do not apply to me. Laws of physics, laws of probability, laws of human nature. I have had, and continue to have, this belief that I can extricate myself from any difficulty. To call it confidence is gross understatement. Thus, when I fail -- and at gambling, I inevitably fail -- my entire self-image is compromised as a result. But there is something strangely appealing to me about creating and then wiggling out of adversity. Deep down, it's fun. Bargaining with someone to loan you money so that you can pay your rent. Figuring out how to talk to credit card companies so that they don't release their collections dogs on you.

Coupled with this is the occasional divine intervention. Or at least the perception of one. Right before starting law school, I was gambling -- and losing -- heavily online. I had twisted myself into a position where I wouldn't have any money with which to start school. At this point, a thousand bucks would have been extremely helpful to me, and on a Friday night, after blowing nearly my entire bankroll on internet blackjack, I asked God to help me. Just this once. Let me win a huge bet at the track and get me out of trouble and I'll never gamble again.

He held up His end of the deal. On Saturday I hit a $1,400 Pick Four at Belmont Park racetrack. Problem solved! Time to go to law school and start my new, gambling-free life. Prayer answered. Of course, I didn't keep my end of the bargain. My default on the deal with God on that night didn't stop me from making similar offers subsequently, but with far less lucrative results.

Even God Himself can run out of patience.

The power of the internet, part one.

Thanks to Cruel.com for the link (I think...)

Gambling and Stimulation.

When I was about 22 years old, I was very tempted to keep a diary. This was before the advent of blogging. I decided against the idea, because I had determined that I'd already have missed so much and as such it wasn't worth the effort. Bad judgment! If I had kept such a journal, I'd be able to confirm one of my hypotheses about compulsive gambling. Here goes:

When a compulsive gambler is out of action for whatever reason, that impulse gets channeled elsewhere and manifests in different, but predictable ways.

For instance, I am not gambling. I haven't gambled in a few weeks. In those weeks, I've signed up for an online dating service and have generally been obsessed with the idea of picking up women. Why? Surprisingly, I think it has very little to do with the physical element of sex. Instead, I need the "action" of being accepted or rejected by all these different, anonymous people. Every attempt to get a pretty girl to express interest is not unlike the turn of a car. At the very least, it's a reason to check my email compulsively. A way to enjoy and revel in uncertainty again, now that gambling isn't available. (And in the words of Tom Cruise as TJ Mackey in the 1999 film Magnolia, "if I happen to get a blowjob out of it, then . . .")

So for all you compulsive gamblers who want to satisfy those impulses in different ways, go sign up for Match.com or eHarmony or something. I'm sure those companies will be thrilled to have my unsolicited endorsement.

"I should have won that coin flip!"

I started playing blackjack in casinos because it was a game that seemed to be at least partly skill-based. Then I learned some half-assed counting strategies and applied them half-assedly in casinos in New Jersey and Connecticut. For those non-math people out there, we're talking about about 1/4 of an ass by this point. Hardly enough to grind out any kind of profit. But it was fun, sort of.

But it was also creepy. I had developed an eerie sense of when a table was going to get cold, or even when a dealer was going to not break even though he was a big favorite to do so. So at the risk of sounding like an insane, superstitious person . . . some general observations meant not to persuade, but rather to merely tell other experienced blackjack players who have experienced the same thing that they are not alone.

I put a large bet up. Large for me is about $250. I'm dealt a 20. The dealer has a 5 showing. My friends, who have since busted out and are now standing behind me as my ad hoc cheering section, are practically already congratulating me for my great sense of timing and testicular fortitude. I know that something's amiss. I can feel it in my stomach that I am going to lose, and I watch mostly in the vain expectation that I might be proved wrong this time. I don't have time to articulate any of this to my pals, or to the table at large. Before I can even say, "I don't feel good about this...", the dealer flips a picture card under the 5, for 15, then an ace, then a five of diamonds. 21. Everyone else is shocked. Tough one.

What makes it tougher is that I'm supposed to feel robbed by this. Somehow, in the time between being dealt my strong natural 20 and the moment the dealer pulls his miracle 21, a certain sense of entitlement is supposed to creep up into my consciousness. "I was entitled to win. I had 20! He had a 5." Of course, the expectation of winning is sort of illusory: I didn't do anything to 'earn' the 20 against the 5. So why feel married to the rights that it's supposed to confer upon me?

If we were betting on a slightly-rigged coin flip, I wouldn't feel robbed when heads came up and I bet tails, no matter what bizarre trajectory the coin took on the way down. I mean, has anyone ever said "I should have won that coin flip!"? Blackjack, and all games of chance against the house are essentially the same thing. Blackjack is no different from a slot machine is no different from Let it Ride is no different from craps. The only thing that is different is the show the casino puts on for you, and the illusion of control and involvement you get to feel in what is essentially a series of slightly-rigged coin flips.

(Sure, the house edges are different, but they're all negative expecatation games for the player.)

Friends and "Gambling-Friends."

Most of my personal relationships with women involve me pretending that I don't gamble at all.

Most of my personal relationships with other men are steeped in gambling -- gambling together, talking about gambling, whatever.

The fact is, there is a great camaraderie that comes with participating in gambling with your friends, as co-adventurers. A shared experience. An opportunity to make jokes. To tell stories. To build a feeling of togetherness and community. The intimacy that comes with being able to call someone with whom you're driving from a casino at 5:00 am 'a fucking degenerate.' It's almost a compliment in my old circle of friends. "That guy is a complete degenerate." "I am such a degenerate." "We are such degenerates."

The whole thing is somewhat illicit, even in legal cardrooms. There's a vague element of rebellion that attends the whole enterprise. Watching a college basketball game with your friend in a bar, and making inside jokes about half-points and line movements.

These are all ways that I've obtained and maintained emotional intimacy with my male friends. Now I can't do that anymore without risking my life and what little I have left to live for. And so a really big part of me is dead and buried already, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it was really sad.

I've received a couple of emails...

... the tenor of which has indicated to me that I should be more clear about what this blog is likely to be 'about.' In order to make that happen, it might be necessary to provide my small, committed readership some autobiographical detail. A little bit of flavor. All thr while, making efforts to retain some shred of anonymity.

I am between 26-32 years old.

I am male.

I attended and graduated from a prestigious liberal arts college on the East Coast.

I placed my first bet (on the NBA, as it turned out) in high school, with some little wanna-be mobster kid who ended up welching. He still owes me $35. $35 in 1993 dollars is probably something like $50 now, in 2006. That son on of a bitch.

I placed my first "real" bet on an internet sportsbook back in the summer of 1997, while still in college. I made a deposit of $300, via Western Union. I bet $30 per game on baseball, and watched the primitive ESPN.com scoreboards as though my life depended on it. I loved being in action. I couldn't buy a winner, it seemed. And I immediately reloaded whatever and whenever I could. Again, via Western Union. I didn't have a credit card, and debit cards hadn't really made it into the mainstream of American commerce yet. So I had to walk about 2 miles to the nearest Western Union outlet, which was housed at a supermarket. The clerks didn't know what to make of the short, bespectacled gentleman with the serious face who was sending cash to Antigua.

I haven't sat down to figure it out, but my best estimate is that I've lost approximately $150,000 gambling. I'll dedicate a future post to a breakdown of the numbers.

I was not joking about the teeth thing.

It's probably the least of my troubles right now, but it's something I'm reminded of every time I eat anything. Two of my bottom molars have essentially rotted away in my mouth, due to general neglect. The third tooth that's missing is all the way in the back. I used to have a crown on it, but that popped out around Christmas a couple of years ago while I was eating a piece of particularly chewy candy. I never bothered replacing it, because it was too expensive to do without proper medical insurance.

What's any of this got to do with being a compulsive gambler? Two things, as near as I can figure:

(1) First is, quite simply. that gambling to an unhealthy extend either causes or correlates to a general lack of interest in self-love, hygiene, and the like. It's not merely that gambling becomes the center of your universe, although that's undoubtedly true. It's that there is a certain ethos associated with the life of a gambler that doesn't recognize the value of taking small, imperceptible steps to take care of yourself. Like brushing your teeth. Washing behind your ears. Exercising. The only meaningful indicator of your health, of your self-worth, is whatever your account balance happens to be.

(2) Only a dentist would know that I've got these massive dental problems. I don't look at all like the cracked-out, snaggletoothed bums that you might see on the street. Similarly, I walked around the halls of my law school, ate lunch with friends, visited my folks for Thanksgiving -- and my gambling addiction was invisible to them all.

Welcome to The Luckiest One.

In 2002, I matriculated at an Ivy League law school. Four short years later, I've found myself in a large Midwestern city, without a law degree. Without a job. Missing three teeth. And approximately $91,000 in debt. I have alienated my friends and family. I have committed many crimes and idly contemplated committing many more. Told countless lies. How to explain this troubling reversal of fortune? Welcome to the entertaining world of online (and offline) gambling. Or "gaming", as it euphemistically called by those in the industry.

A point of clarification: This blog is not meant solely to be a broadside against the companies that profit from the recent synergy of gambling and the internet anymore than it is meant solely to be an exercise in self-flagellation for my utter lack of good judgment or willpower. Instead, I am writing this to tell people of my journey. It's mostly a cautionary tale. And perhaps it's one told in vain, given the fact that those who are most at risk are, if they're anything like me, quite adroit at the whole self-deceit thing.

That said, sometimes I will call out different gaming industry entities for what I believe to be outrageous conduct. But more often, I'll hold my own feet to the flame for having been an idiot. Impulsive. Greedy. Desperate.

The good news is that, as far as the scourge of gambling is concerned, there's more than enough guilt to go around.